The Brookhaven leader., 1887-11-24
THE GOSPEL OF HEALTH.
nyvlNE SERVICES IN THE BROOK
LYN TABERNACLE.

Sorn in the Liver.
BROOKLYN, Nov. 20.-The Rev. T. De
Witt Talmagc, ID. D., opened the services
ot the tabernacle this morning by giving
out the hymn beginning:
Should coming days be cold and dark,
We need not cease our singing;
That perfect rest nought can molest,
Where golden harps are ringing.
ue then explained a passage in the
the Gospel of st. Matthew, concerning
tbn inferior kind of salt that was cast out
10 make walks Of, to be trodden under
foot of men. The subject OF DIR. Tai
,nace's discourse was: 1.-The Gospel of
Health. and his text from Proverbs vii,
o3. Till dart strike through his
liver" He said:
There is a fashion in sermonics. A
conIuratively small part of the Bible is
callel on for texts. Most of the passages
of Scripture, when announced at the
onening Of sermons, Immediately divide
themselves into old discussions that we
have heard from boyhood, and the effect
an ia il soporific. The auditor guesses
Mt the start Just what the preacher will
saw There are very important chapters
and verses that have never been preached
from. Much of my lifetime am devot
;ng to unlocking these gold chests and
blasting open these quarries. We talk
about the heart, and preach about the
heart. and sing about the heart, but if
YOU refer TO the physical organ that we
call the heart, it has not half SO much to
do with spiritual health or disease, moral
exaltation or spiritual depression, as the
organ to the consideration of which Solo
mon calls us in the text, when he de-
Scribes sin progressing It'll dart strike
through his liver
Solomon's anatomical and physiological
discoveries were so very great that he
was nearly 5000 years ahead of the
scientists of his day. He, more than
1000 years before Christ, seemed to know
about the circulation of the blood, which
Harvey discovered 1,G19 years after
Christ. for when Solomon in Ecclesiastes,
describing the human body, speaks of the
pitcher at the fountain, he evidently
means the three canals leading from the
heart that receive the blood like pitchers.
When he speaks in Ecclesiastes of the
silver cord of life, he evidently means the
spinal marrow, about which in our day
Doctors Mayo. and Carpenter, and Dalton,
and Flint, and Brown Sequard have ex-
perimented. And Solomon recorded i'll
the Bible thousands of years before scien-
fists discovered it, that in his time the
spinal cord relaxed in old age. producing
the tremors of hand and head: "'Or the
Gilver cord I've loosed."
In the text he reveals the fact that he
lo1 4 81 Of fhn
human system, the liver. not by the
electric light of the modern dissecting
room, but by the dim light of a compare
lively dark age, and yet had seen its inn
portant function in the God built castle of
the human body, its selecting and secret
ing power, its curious cells, its elongated,
branching tubes, a divine workmanship
in central, and right, and left lobe, and
the hepatic artery through which God
conducts the crimson tides. Oh, this
vital organ is like the eye of God in that
1t never sleeps. Solomon knew of 1t and
had noticed either in vivisection or post
mortem what awful attacks sin and dis
6ipatlon make upon it, until with the fiat
of Almighty God it bids the body and
soul separate and the one it commands
to the grave, and the other it sends to
judgment. a javelin of retribution, not
glancing off or making slight wound,
but piercing it from side to side It'll the
dart strike through the liver" Galen
and Hippocrates ascribe to the liver the
most of the worlds moral depression,
and the word melancholy means black
bile
preach to you this morning the Cos
pei of Health. In taking diagnosis of the
diseases Of the soul you must also take
The diagnosis of the diseases of the body.
AS If to recognize this, one whole book of
the New Testament was written by
physician. Luke was a doctor, and he
discourses much of physical effects, and
he tells OF the good Samaritan S medica-
ton OF the wounds by pouring in oil and
WINE, and recognizes hunger as a him
drance to hearing the Gospel, so that the
1900 were fed and records the sparse
diet of the prodigal away from home
and the extinguished eyesight of the
oeggar away from home. and lets us
Know of the hemorrhage of the wounds
OF the dying Christ and the miraculous
poStmortem resuscitation. And any esti-
mate of the spiritual condition that does
not include also an estimate of the physi-
cal condition is incomplete. When the
doorkeeper of congress fell dead from
excessive Joy because Burgoyne had sur
rendered at Saratoga, and Philip the
fifth of Spain dropped dead at the news
OF his country's defeat in battle, and
cardinal Wolsey expired as result of
Henry the Eighth's anathema, it was
demonstrated that the body and soul are
oiamese twins, and when you thrill the
one with joy or sorrow you thrill the
other. We might as well recognize the
TACT that there are two mighty fortresses
IN the human body, the heart and the
hVer; the heart the fortress of all the
graces, the liver the fortress of all the
turies. You may have the head filled
with all intellectualities, and the ear with
all musical appreciation, and the mouth
with all eloquence, and the hand with
an industries, and tie heart with all gen
erosltles, and yet "a dart strike through
the liver"
First, let Christian people avoid the
mistake that they are all wrong with God
oecause they suffer from depression OF
spirits. Many consecrated man has
found his spiritual sky befogged, and his
nope OF heaven blotted out. and himself
plunged chin deep in the Slough of De-
spond, and has said: "Aly heart is not
right with God, and think must have
made mistake, and instead of being
enid OF light am child of darkness.
no one can feel as gloomy as l feel and
oe o Christian" And he has gone to his